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Like many of you, we’re sure, we have been waiting for the James Webb Space Telescope to start sending back images.
To be clear, it has been sending back images, but they were limited and also were used to test the systems. We barely got a hint of what is now possible.
On Tuesday though the first official images were released. So what do we have?
Well put it this way.
When NASA first released an image of earth from space, it immediately changed perceptions of our place in the universe.
Hubble did it again, with incredible pictures of the heavens, things we never could have imagined.
And now James Webb, with vastly more power, has taken those things and...well, what can you say to this?
If you have a heart, you can’t help but be moved by what we’ve accomplished, even in the very early days of this telescope.
Think about all those people who sat outside for eons at night, looking at the stars, wondering what they were and what they meant.
They learned to chart them, to know things like the solstices. Some cultures learned to anticipate comets and eclipses.
Look at this video and think of them. What would they have thought? How much awe would they have felt? What about Galileo? Newton? Einstein? Hawking? It’s impossible for any of us to imagine what they would have thought, but it’s easy to imagine them crying over the sheer beauty. The idea of space as being a vast empty place is gone forever.
Some of our elders got to see us go from Kitty Hawk to the moon, and some of us got to share that magical day.
For anyone who didn’t, this is something you will tell your grandchildren about.
We are children in the universe, maybe, but this week we grew up a bit. Thank you NASA, and everyone who had a hand in this. We can never thank you enough.
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